August 13th, 2009
Accreditation has become a major deciding factor for many people in choosing online schools and universities. While most universities who simply offer degrees online in addition to their ordinary degree programs boast impressive accreditations, many others do not which has exceedingly hurt their reputations.
Attaining an accreditation can sometimes be a difficult task for any school that is just starting out, regardless of their academic standing. However, lacking this accreditation can hurt the school’s student population, which makes this simple task the most arduous one. Failure to receive accreditation will serve to negatively affect the future of the school, and could even lead to its dismissal from academic standing. Therefore, the one thing a school prides itself on is its accreditation within the educational community. The online schools that have prospered the most are those which received their accreditation early on and promoted this as an incentive towards attending the school.
Employers are well aware of schools that are and are not accredited and take this into account when faced with possible employees. An interviewee who has an accredited school background looks much better on paper than an interviewee who does not. Therefore, online schools across the nation have been striving to receive such accreditation, vying with other schools to attract more students. However, the best way to attract students now has become accreditation. The goals of accreditation are to ensure a quality of education that is matched by every school across the country. Major online universities like Phoenix and Kaplan boast themselves on their accreditation which puts them on par with commuter schools around the country. The U.S. Department of Education creates an accreditation “test” of sorts which determines the standards that schools have to live up to. Smaller educational associations determine whether or not these standards have been met through various criteria and peer evaluations. Furthermore, the Secretary of Education is bound by law to compile a list of accredited schools within the nation, and until these many online schools gain such accreditation, they will remain off the list. The Department of Education is not solely responsible for accreditation; much to the contrary, it relies on smaller private organizations to determine the criteria and perform the applicable tests on new schools.
Most new schools that are just starting out are online universities since it has become increasingly difficult to develop funding for new stationary universities. The federal government has the final say in accreditation standards, however, and a school does not receive its accreditation without such a federal approval. However, making things more complicated is the wide variety in accreditation standards as related to public and private schools, schools in different states, and online schools. Private organizations have struggled with the best method in which to measure all these various schools, which has resulted in many different smaller umbrella methods for determination. Therefore, attaining accreditation from the federal government makes a world of difference to both schools and students. Picking an online school that is accredited is an important choice to make in your educational future, opening doors to many future employment opportunities that un-accredited universities may not be able to.
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